Historical Background

Unit I-Module 1

How did the struggle over rights by different groups affect the success/failure of Reconstruction?

At the end of the Civil War, the nation faced the problems of readmitting the rebellious Confederate states to the Union, the status and future of the freedmen, and a struggle for control of Reconstruction between the President and Congress. When President Abraham Lincoln delivered his Second Inaugural Address on March 4, 1865, a Union victory was only weeks away. Lincoln had already devised a plan to reunite the divided country as quickly and compassionately as possible—to “bind up the nation’s wounds.”

Lincoln’s assassination left Reconstruction in the hands of his successor, Vice-President Andrew Johnson and a Congress that was dominated by Radical Republicans who advocated a more punitive and lengthy readmission process. Radical Republicans feared that once the Southern state governments were “redeemed” that they would violate the rights of the freedmen whose bondage had been abolished by the 13th Amendment in 1865.

To protect the freedmen from the Black Codes passed by the former Confederate state governments, the 14th Amendment was added to the Constitution in 1868, granting citizenship and “equal protection of the laws” to the ex-slaves. In 1870, African-American men were guaranteed the right to vote with the ratification of the 15th Amendment. The response of the Southern governments was to raise impediments to black suffrage, such as poll taxes and literacy tests. With the removal of federal troops from the South in 1877, the freedmen were unprotected. The nation entered a period of de jure segregation in the South and de facto segregation in the North that would take a century for the civil rights movement to end.

Unit I-Module 2

What did the ideas of indusrtial progress mean to different social groups and why?
As the nation grappled with Reconstruction and its aftermath, it was also being transformed by industrialization which had grown rapidly after the Civil War and would have major ramifications for every social group in the United States.
Native Americans and whites had been at war since the first white settlements were established in the New World. As the line of European settlers moved westward, they inevitably clashed with the indigenous cultures. After the Civil War, the federal government sent troops to the West to subdue the remaining hostile tribes. These tribes fell victim to the military power, the superior technology of the whites, and the extermination of the buffalo herds. The surviving tribes were relegated to life on reservations. Native Americans would not be granted citizenship until 1924.The subjugation of the Native Americans led to an influx of white settlers to lands once dominated by American Indians. This massive migration was fueled by European immigration, the Homestead Act, and the expansion of the railroad. By 1890, the U.S. Census Bureau announced that the frontier was closed. Accelerated industrialization attracted large numbers of immigrants to this country who were seeking economic opportunities and political freedom. Twenty-seven million immigrants came to America between 1870 and 1914, taking advantage of steamship transportation which made the voyage cheaper and faster. Immigrants who completed the arduous journey to the United States and cleared the immigration centers tended to settle in urban areas. Although they generally took the most menial jobs, their standard of living actually improved. However, their arrival in the cities created massive problems of overcrowded slums, poor sanitation and disease.